Press and Publications

Afro-Colombian women took their demands for peace, justice and equality to the United Nations this week, as the Colombian Government faces questioning of its human rights record before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva.

Drafted by Proceso de Comunidades Negras, MADRE, and the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic at CUNY School of Law, the report is on human rights violations and a pattern of discrimination against Afro-Colombian women and their communities.

Together with our partner in Nepal, the National Indigenous Women's Forum, we put forward a report to the UN presenting 15 recommendations on guaranteeing equal rights for Indigenous women in Nepal. 

This report, published in advance of the UN Human Rights Council’s review of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's human rights record in April/May 2019, documents human rights violations against women and girls, including threats to and violations of their gender-based human rights and participation in peacebuilding efforts, particularly in the eastern provinces of the country.

Charo Mina Rojas, member of Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), a MADRE partner organization in Colombia, addressed the UN in Geneva on the topic of racial justice. 

Please sign on your organization to a letter calling on Colombia’s Attorney General to free detained Afro-Colombian women human rights defenders, Sara Quiñonez and her mother Tulia Valencia, both members of Black Communities Process (PCN), and expressing concern about politically motivated arrests of human rights defenders. Both Ms. Quiñonez and Ms. Valencia have risked their lives defending Afro-Colombians’ collective and territorial rights and were recently forcibly displaced as a result of death threats targeting them for their advocacy. The two face trumped-up accusations of guerrilla involvement, simply for being prominent human rights defenders.

A new convention on crimes against humanity (CAH) is in its final draft stages — and recently hit a new milestone. Following a campaign led by MADRE, Outright Action International and CUNY Law School, the International Law Commission (ILC) took a crucial step. In the latest draft, the outdated definition of gender — which placed many at risk and limited rights protections — was removed. 

MADRE and the CUNY School of Law joined a coalition of organizations to convene an experts’ meeting, bringing together 25 international experts and scholars in the fields of international criminal law and gender rights. 

A petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding ISIS crimes will be the first of its kind, seeking to advance protection of the rights of women and LGBTIQ people on the international stage. Filed jointly by three non-governmental organizations—MADRE, the Human Rights and Gender Justice (HRGJ) Clinic of the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, and the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)—the petition makes the case that the International Criminal Court should prosecute ISIS fighters for crimes they have committed on the basis of gender, including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

On June 29th, 2017, the Haitian Senate introduced a bill with homophobic provisions. 

This is a timeline of documented incidences of women killed by ISIS because of their gender expression, including defying ISIS ascribed roles, behaviors, dress, and other gender attributes. 

We the undersigned organizations write to express our deep concerns about the latest restrictions on civil society participation at the 2017 UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meetings. This year's CSW is taking place under the shadow of the United States’ escalated anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and anti-Muslim policies, which are preventing some women from exercising their right to political participation at UN Headquarters in New York. The policies represent the latest in a long history of restrictive migration, refugee and asylum measures that subject women and their families to hate crimes, detention, deportation and family separation, while undermining core universal human rights regarding migrant and refugee rights, and worker protections. These circumstances emphasize the urgent need for women facing multiple discriminations to be at the center of conversations on human rights at CSW.